you guesstimate that 80% of drivers have had a drink before getting on the road?

That explains SO much...

christmas eve, 1985.

We had a tradition in my family, we unwrapped one present each on christmas eve. my dad kept hinting that I should unwrap the big box up front.
I did. It had an NES in it.

My dad passed on opening one of his presents so i could open another one of mine. it had Wrecking Crew in it.

My father and I spent the next several hours alternating between two-player wrecking crew and super mario brothers, until mom made us go to bed because santa wasn't coming as long as I was up.

it was a good day.

Actually I did stop playing wow to play d3. for like 3 or 4 weeks.

really though, it's just... it's just time. the game is a fantastic game, one of the best ever made, but it's been the same thing with new coats of paint for almost a decade now. you can only do this same dance so many times before you sit up, ask yourself "what else is there", and wander off.

I was in a world top 80 guild in vanilla. I personally was the highest DPS on the server for a good while. It was a 7-day-a-week job, but I was young and my GF (now wife) raided with me so it was doable. we both burnt out about the same time the rest of the guild did, it colapsed in on itself about the time we realized that the imminent expansion would completely negate everything we'd done. and it did. complete burnout. left the game for 6 months at least.

raided with a semi-serious raiding guild in TBC. I fought my way back up into a server-best guild again by the end of the next expansion (wrath is still the best thing they ever made imo), just in time for it to all repeat again.

didn't bother raiding cata. same song and dance again.

haven't even SEEN most of mop, i mostly just level alts now. dungeon finder circa level 15 to 55, and questing in northrend and cataclysm for nostalgic purposes, that's all the game is to me anymore, a time sink for nostalgic purposes. like putting weekend at bernies on the tv while you're cleaning the house.

yes.
that's a limitation on the clause.
which is exactly what I said.
look, it's not exactly rocket science here.

I'm pretty sure that putting limits on the interstate commerce clause is exactly what Chief Justice did in the recent affordable care act case.

read up on it. in the furor over "omg he betrayed conservatives everywhere he's a villain! lynch him!" hysteria, the true legacy of his phrasing of the majority decision was pretty much overlooked.

I suppose it depends on which X2 processors you're refering to.
I have a "regor" based X2 that I purchased brand new in 2010.

I don't doubt that it works. I have a previous version of integrated intel graphics (yes I am aware of the advancements of the HD2000/3000/4000 series in comparison) on this laptop, and -can- game with the settings turned down... way down.

that said, I think my (somewhat cynical) "we are as good as a 6 year old card!" comments are pretty appropriate. Tom's hardware ranks the HD4000 roughly on par with the nvidia 6800 ultra (released in 2004) or the 8600GT (released in 2006).

the 8600gt was a fine midrange card, and can still run today's games, albiet at reduced resolution and details. if all you're looking for is the ability to run a game, period, these chips will work, but I can't really say they'd do much better than a console (the ps3 gpu is essentially an nvidia gtx 7800, and the 360 gpu is similar, only with unified shaders), and again they don't hold a candle to even modest dedicated cards today.

in a laptop, I might be interested. On the desktop, which is what the chips being reviewed are for, I can't see much use for these things when it comes to gaming (which, again, is their big selling point right now). if you're building a desktop machine you expect to do any gaming on, and the extra $100 for, say, a gts 450 or something like that is a budget breaker, maybe you should be saving up an extra month.

Pretty much until the sandy bridge era, integrated graphics were completely unusable for gaming, and they are still years behind dedicated cards.

Your statement that "90% of folks either of these is good enough." is true, but misleading. It is true that the extent of desktop/laptop gaming that most people are interested in maxes out at farmville (or whatever the new facebook gaming trend is, I certainly don't pay attention), and they do their gaming on their phone, tablet or console.

These articles however are written towards the community that constructs their own PCs, or at the very least is quite picky about what is inside their machines. You don't read these articles unless you care about such things. From that perspective, for the majority of the target audience of TFA links, these graphics performance of either brand is hardly good enough for any sort of main machine build.

"back in the day?" Athlon X2? Wasn't that like a year or two ago?

My first AMD build was a K5 200mhz (OC'd to 225mhz!), and I was late to the party... my buddy had a 40mhz AMD i386 years beforehand.

Whippersnapper, get off my lawn!

Ironic statement, since the main selling point of the chip being reviewed here is its integrated graphics.

Which I find just silly really. These are fine chips to build a PC for your little cousin who surfs the web and maybe plays world of warcraft. for any real build, integrated graphics, for all their advancements, still read like:
Intel: "Our new HD4000 graphics are nearly as fast as a mainstream card from 8 years ago!"
AMD: "HAH, our new chip's graphics cores are as fast as a mainstream card from 6 years ago! we're two years of obsolecense better!"

even a $100 modern dedicated card will whallop either of these chips solutions.

you realize that attitudes like yours and GPs are exactly what turns prospective linux neophytes off, right?

For an every-day user, Linux has just as many problems as windows. the problems are just completely different. Source: I use both linux and windows every day. typing this on a linux laptop for pete's sake.

For the OP's concerns, linux very well may be his best option, but telling him that he's been playing in the little kid's sandbox is very nearly as counterproductive as telling him that he's a retard, as GP did.

of course not. that's part of the conspiracy. that's how you know it's the truth!
the only way it could be MORE truth is if there was evidence directly contrary to the conspiracy, because that'd have to be planted evidence. lack of evidence is just THEM being tricky.

ow my head hurts.

So, what you're saying is, the answer to the Fermi Paradox is "Religion"...

my 5g ipod with rockbox did between 10 and 11 hours playing -q4 (~128kbps) vorbis last time I tested it, which was really at least 3 years ago, probably better now. I know they've done improvements to the codec implimentation since then.

the same 5g ipod playing similar bitrate MP3, tested around the same time, was better by about 2 hours.

I'm not sure what qualifies as "guzzling", but I doubt I'm ever going to listen to my ipod for more than 11 hours without recharging it, especially considering I keep it plugged into a lighter socket in my car pretty much full time now.

That's fine with me, My last hearing test said my ears only go to about 18 and 20 kHz respectively.